Laudator Temporis Acti

Martin West, "A Fragment of an Early Sympotic Elegy?" Eikasmós 23 (2012) 11-14 (at 13):

In the present case the source poem would not have been an epic, but it might very well have been a sympotic elegy. Elegy was a well established genre before the time of the Odyssey. Many passages in the Iliad seem to show the influence of martial protreptic elegy of the kind represented by Callinus and Tyrtaeus⁶. Elegy celebrating cheerful living will have been no less familiar to the Homeric poets, even if it less often provided them with verbal inspiration. It is not difficult to imagine a short poem on these lines:

οὐκ ἔραμαι πλουτεῖν, οὐ χρήματ᾽ ἔχειν ὅσα Γύγης
    ἢ Κινύρης· ἀρκεῖ κτῆσις ἐμοί γ᾽ ὀλίγη.
ὅσσ᾽ ἔφαγόν τ᾽ ἔπιόν τε καὶ αἰδοίοισιν ἔδωκα,
    ταῦτ᾽ ἄφενος τίθεμαι· τἄλλ᾽ ἀνέμοισιν ἐῶ.

I take οὐκ ἔραμαι πλουτεῖν from Theogn. 1155, Gyges from Archil. fr. 19 W.², Cinyras from Tyrt. fr. 12,6 W.², ταῦτ᾽ ἄφενος from Solon fr. 24,7 W.<sup>2

6</sup> See my Hellenica I, Oxford 2011, 209-213, 226-232.

Here is my translation of West's verses:

I don't want to be rich or to have as much money as Gyges
or Cinyras; few possessions are enough for me.
As much as I have eaten and drunk and given to my genitals,
that I consider wealth; let me dismiss the rest to the winds.

West is discussing the source of Homer, Odyssey 15.373 (tr. A.T. Murray):

Therefrom have I eaten and drunk, and given to reverend strangers.

τῶν ἔφαγόν τ᾽ ἔπιόν τε καὶ αἰδοίοισιν ἔδωκα.

See also M.L. West, The Making of the Odyssey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 34-35, on other supposed borrowings from elegy and iambus.

Related posts:

• What I Ate and Drank
• Four Imperatives
• The Epitaph of Sardanapalus